Written by former Senate education staffer and journalist Alexander Russo, This Week in Education covers education news, policymakers, and trends with a distinctly political edge. (For archives prior to January 2007, please click here. For posts after November 2007, please click here.) Comments on this blog are now closed.

By Alexander Russo July 24, 2007 at 4:05 PM

The last time the Senate reauthorized the HEA was a long time ago. I was still working for Jeff Bingaman and we thought that we could really, finally, get ed schools to do a better job on teacher prep. But now the Senate has passed its version of the bill -- no House companion to go along with it, and congrats to everyone there for getting that done. The implications for NCLB as I read them are bad, however. With two weeks left before August recess and a big education bill in hand, no one on the Senate side at ...

By Alexander Russo July 24, 2007 at 3:55 PM

According to this press release, EdSec Spellings thinks employers wants more kids with "pocket protector" skills, which means (a) geeks, (b) people who know not to put inky pens in their pockets, (c) something having to do with pocket pool, or (d) all of the above. Here's the quote: "Employers today need workers with 'pocket-protector' skills, creative problem-solvers with strong math and science backgrounds," said Secretary Spellings. "The more students we train to be entrepreneurs and creative problem solvers, the more jobs they'll create, and the greater ability they'll have to improve the quality of life for others."...

By Alexander Russo July 24, 2007 at 1:04 PM

The use of interns is a delicate thing, which is why by and large I've limited the ones I've worked with to morning news roundups and describing events they attend -- extremely useful tasks but not ones that presume any inside knowledge or policy chops. Not so The Quick & The Ed, which is letting interns post commentary like this recent post, which begins "Flipping through my 10th grade U.S. history text book..." Who has their 10th grade history text nearby? A junior at Brown does. Which is fine -- it's just not something I'm expecting to see published by ...

By Alexander Russo July 24, 2007 at 9:30 AM

The most interesting thing to me about Steve Barr (Maverick Leads Charge for Charter Schools) is that Barr doesn't seem like he really wants to be the show pony for Gates, Broad, the Andy Sector, and the New Schools Venture Fund -- folks who are trying to create or promote more of what the Times describes as "nonprofit, high-performing charter chains" along the lines of KIPP and Achievement First. He'll take their money and their praise, but he doesn't want to expand as fast as they want him to, whether it's to parts of LAUSD where he has no credibility ...

By Alexander Russo July 24, 2007 at 9:26 AM

The lineup of folks coming in to sell schools books is going to be slightly different this year. Both EdWeek and the NY Times recently have articles on the publishing industry, following up on the "merger" of Houghton Mifflin and RiverDeep -- known for Reader Rabbit among other things (Riverdeep buys Houghton Mifflin for 1.8B eSchool News). Quoting former Hill rat Jay Diskey, the EdWeek story describes how Houghton Mifflin is going to buy Harcourt Education, creating a "big three" of textbook publishers in the US (Houghton Mifflin, Pearson Education, and McGraw-Hill). The NYT story focuses on the implications ...